


light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather

by windbellows



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Gen, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23618848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windbellows/pseuds/windbellows
Summary: Link goes into the forest and the trees whisper,Welcome home.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [here](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Hop_along,_my_little_friends,_up_the_Withywindle!)  
> can't take the forest out of the boy

There is a forest dark and deep, and within sits another forest, and within that forest sits a sword. It has been waiting for many years, still stained with mud and blood. The forest children crowd around, poking and prodding at it, until their caretaker rustles his ancient branches and tells them, in a gentle tone, to leave it alone.

 _It is waiting,_ he says. 

The Koroks know who it’s waiting for. But when will he return, they ask? The Deku Tree creaks.

 _He will return,_ he promises his children. _The Hero always comes home._

One hundred or so years ago, a boy, soon to be knight, walks into the Korok Forest. They know who he is.

_He has done it before -_

Thousands of years ago, way before the Calamity was a concept, or even born, a lone boy stumbles onto the forested island from the waves that lap at shore and there’s people there, people who were once like him (but all things changed when the goddesses rose the seas) and indeed, he was once like them (and all things change when you go back in time), and the giant tree looks at him with weary recognition. Another of his children, lost to prophecy - 

_And he will do it again._

Thousands of years before thousands of years: a young man on unsteady legs walks into the forest. Much can change in time. There’s an empty meadow waiting for him, and a stump - there’s no one there -

\--

Link didn’t know what to do with the Korok stumps at first. Due to a misunderstanding he brought upon himself, he had assumed that they were some type of shield-surfing game. He knows what they are now, and rather foolishly so, and it is upon one right now where he sits and snacks upon an apple. He shifts a little and the familiar broken circle sprouts up in the distance, ticking down. 

“Oh, shut up,” he mumbles, taking another bite. 

\--

There are some who say the castle is the center of the land. They are wrong, and quite foolish. There are others who say there’s no defined center of Hyrule, especially considering how often it’s uprooted and dumped back down - they certainly aren’t wrong. But the Deku Tree and his woodland domain, with its roots spreading far and wide, is the veritable center of the _world_. Before there was time there was forest; the Deku Tree is old, very old. 

The trees have lived long lives, and there are some who are still quite young. On the edges of the brutal Hebra cold trees cling to the cliff ledges and stand stubbornly in the snow; pine trees, the mighty watchers, dot the mountaintops and flow down their sides like a blanket. In Akkala the pale-barked trees catch the fire from the looming mountain, growing in an eternal blaze.

They say Faron Woods was carved by a dragon - in truth, it was shaped like clay at the beginning of the world by the green goddess herself, and the dragon Farosh swoops overhead on her path. She veers towards the glittering lake and its towering bridge. There’s a lone traveler, who carries lifetimes in his bones; he does not move when she soars close, or when her lightning drifts so near as to singe his hair. He catches her eye and she knows him more than he knows himself, for they are both Farore’s chosen, and when he draws back an arrow and lets loose she does not scream. 

Let it be known that Lanayru, now a land of wetlands and crystal cliffs, was once a desert and before that, a sea, but the Faron Woods have always been the Woods. Steady is their way. 

\-- 

There’s a Korok near Link’s house in Hateno. It’s a nice place, but empty; he hangs up Mipha’s trident, and soon Daruk’s stone slab will be joining as well, but it’s quiet, a distance from the sounds of Hateno. But there’s a Korok, near his house and below the bridge, and somehow that makes it better. 

He brings it food one night, a simple meal of apples and honey, and it claps its little hands. “Thank you, Mr. Hero!” it says excitedly. “You’re truly kind.”

“Am I a kind person?” Link asks, leaning back against the stone wall. 

“Of course you are, Mr. Hero,” the Korok replies, apple bits at the sides of its - well, if it had a mouth. Link reaches out and wipes them off. “You’ve always been kind.”

\--

Link loves the wild. The grass under his feet and the wind in his hair and the mountains in the distance, forever rolling. And he loves the forests. Amongst the trees and their leafed cover he feels safe, and warm, and when he lies down to take a rest the forest floor is like the softest bed and he wakes up to leaves in his hair, and flowers. The trees are sturdy and they talk; “Be careful, lad,” a traveler near the Dueling Peaks warns him. “Forests have a mind of their own.”

But Link hears their whispers on the wind like song, and they're light and airy and gentle. 

Do they ever whisper of him?

Upon Satori Mountain a green creature walks. Neither horse nor deer, it stares at Link with multiple eyes and within it Link can see himself, over and over and over again, and he knows this creature is old; it is as old as the forests themselves. Farore’s chosen. But when Link mounts it it lets him sit, and moves freely under his grip, its hoofbeats like Korok lights; the Lord of the Mountain knows a child of the forest when he sees one, and he feels the roots stretching in Link’s soul, wrapping themselves into his veins and very being. 

(You can take the boy out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the boy…)

There’s one who watches him, and she’s in the leaves fluttering in the wind and the aged bark at his back when he leans, and the branches through which the sun and stars peek through. When he first came out of the Shrine of Resurrection she was the grass beneath his feet, grounding him.

Link does not remember himself. He hums a song, sometimes, that he does not know. 

(He has never forgotten.) 

And he goes into the forest, and the trees whisper _Welcome home._ They have never stopped looking after him.

\--

There is a forest dark and deep. Within that forest there is another, and within _that_ forest there is a sword, and -

One hundred years after the Calamity, a lone boy runs into Korok Forest, torch in hand. There is a sword, in front of him, and he reaches out to pull it and there’s that sudden burning glow of memory and a voice he’s come to recognize, and he jerks back and the giant tree in front of him creaks, and its ancient wood moans. 

_Well, well,_ says the Deku Tree. _It’s… you._

\--

Behind one of the Deku Tree’s roots lies a shield and spear of Korok make. Link picks the wooden shield up, and turns it over and over and holds it and it feels - it feels just right.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! well wishes to all.  
> did you know you can hear a bit of kokiri forest in the deku tree's botw theme :') that was what inspired this fic


End file.
